My Time Trying Thai

Recipes on deck for tomorrow night - Thai coconut shrimp soup with spinach and Pad Thai (Mark Bittman). I am finding myself very fond of Mark Bittman's recipes.  He is able to make so many recipes accessible and non-intimidating to home cooks.  I would love a few pictures in his cookbooks but that really is my only negative feedback.  Hopefully I will remember to take some pictures. 

Pizza - mushroom, spinach, bacon, sundried tomato

Ok, today I spent the majority of the day preparing the ingredients for what was supposed to be an awesome-to-die-for pizza.  It was okay but not at all worth the amount of effort that was put into it.  It started at 10 o'clock a.m. - I put together the mostly whole wheat pizza crust recipe from Mark Bittman's Food Matters cookbook.  Next I needed to roast some garlic and precook the bacon.  I also sauteed mushrooms and had to reconstitute the dried tomatoes.  I made a version of Emeril Lagasse's white sauce for pizza minus the cayenne pepper adding the roasted garlic to the sauce.  The sauce seemed a little bland and the pizza dough should have been much thinner. I will try a different version!

The salad was a mixed greens salad with defrosted blueberries, granny smith apples, crumbled bacon, feta cheese with a blueberry dressing found at this website.  I also made Cinnamon Roasted Almonds to put on the salad and these were the best thing I made today. 

I also decided to cook a pot of brown rice to use for the rest of the week. 

Tomorrow I am planning on making Thai food and hope that it was worth the cost of the condiments.

Smoothie Fail

I thought I would try my hand at a very healthy smoothie today.

Recipe, although it does not and probably should not deserve a repeat unless to tweak it.

1 peeled beet, raw
2 apples
1 navel orange
2 blood oranges
1 inch cube peeled ginger
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup ice
2 tablespoons honey

The color is beautiful however when I drank this I noticed that it tasted somewhat like dirt and burned my throat. I chalked it up to me getting a cold but my almost 2 year old slowly sipped it and said "not liking the smoothie. Need a new smoothie." I knew that I wasn't alone in being terribly let down at the flavor.

I am not giving up on adding veggies to my smoothies but will perhaps follow a few recipes for guidance, it couldn't hurt.

Kicked up scrambled eggs

After receiving a generous amount of onions in my Bountiful Basket this week, I decided to try my hand at adding caramelized onions to scrambled eggs.  I always like to have extra veggies in my food, it is an easy way to sneak in nutrition and bulk up a dish. 

Olive oil
3 onions - sliced into thin half rings
1 bunch Swiss chard greens
Ham chunks
Swiss and Gruyere cheese
8 eggs
1/4 cup whole milk
Salt and Pepper
1 teaspoon herbs De Provence

I added a couple of turns of olive oil around the pan then added my sliced onions and allowed them to cook for 15 minutes or so until they were nicely caramelized.  I added about 1 1/2 cups cleaned chopped Swiss chard and 1/2 cup of ham chunks and cooked this until the chard became wilted.  I removed this from my pan and then added back 8 eggs scrambled with the whole milk and cooked slowly over low heat until almost set.  At this point I added back the other mixture and added the salt, pepper and herbs De Provence then sprinkled to top with cheese and set it in my oven which was preheated to 350 degrees.  I left in the oven until the cheese was completely melted.


Great addition to our Sunday brunch!